Happy 8th Birthday Ryan!

Another birthday has passed and I can't believe my "baby" is 8 years old already!  Where has the time gone?

With our new shirts on May 12th, the morning of Ryan's birthday!

Mahopac Middle School

Take notice of Ryan's hand.  He was very possessive of his cake this year.  He didn't want Julia anywhere near it when it was time to blow out the candle.  By the way, the cake on our left is a GF chocolate chip cookie cake made by Carol, and the cake with the Darth Vader candle is a GF cake from The Pastry Garden.  Both were extremely tasty! 

717 pieces!

Before bed Ryan studied the box of his new Lego set.  He eagerly asked if he could head to bed to start his drawings now that he has lots of details in his mind.

This is where I found Ryan at 5:30 a.m. this morning. Determined to build his new Lego set without our help.  

He spent about 4 hours on it today (2 hours before school and 2 hours after school) and he is a little over half way done.
It is coming out great!

Some old pictures to look at.  No, this isn't Jack, it is Ryan!  He was 18 months in this picture.

And he was three and a half years old in this picture:

And how about this video of Ryan receiving one of his B12 injections.  It feels like a lifetime ago that we needed to do this.  It brought me to tears watching this video and reliving flashbacks of the months and months of struggling we went through to get Ryan to this point getting his injection. Ryan has come so far!

Since I didn't post for Mother's Day I want to share one of the gifts Ryan made me.  It is a letter that I will treasure forever!

My four beauties!  How did I get so lucky???

Last, but not least, thank you to everyone who reached out to Ryan for his birthday.  I passed along all of the messages and showed him the pictures of people wearing their Ryan Express shirt.  The Autism Speaks walk is coming up on June 1st.  We hope you can join us!  If you would like to join our team or make a donation, please follow the link below.
The Ryan Express team page

DC

Day 22

Ryan attended a birthday party today and did great in regards to food. He sat at the table and watched kids grabbing at pretzels and cheese doodles. He didn't reach out his hand at all. I could tell he wanted some, but he didn't touch them. He looked at me first and asked if it was okay for him to eat them. I told him I would give him a special snack and he was fine eating something different. That is basically what happened for lunch and birthday cake. When they were passing out the pieces of ice cream cake he announced that he wanted his special cake. I wonder if he is okay with all of this because he recognizes that it makes him feel better. Wow! I am so proud of him!

We are celebrating Ryan's birthday in conjunction with Mother's Day tomorrow (he'll be 4 on Wednesday). Our immediate family will be here to help us celebrate. I made a GFCF chocolate cake and vanilla frosting. Ryan was excited to watch me make it and is looking forward to his pirate birthday party. The cake looks like a typical birthday cake but it isn't as tall; the cake cooked on the flatter side. Now I just hope it tastes okay and everyone doesn't mind eating it. I figured on his birthday he shouldn't need to have something different from everyone else and ask for his "special" cake. We're all going to eat Ryan's cake.

DC